


The Finest Cakes Available to Humanity

by DwarvenBeardSpores



Category: Seiyou Kottou Yougashiten | Antique Bakery, Withnail & I (1986)
Genre: Ambiguity, Cake, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Melancholy, POV First Person, Post-Canon, Reunions, Smoking, in both cases, remnants of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 22:29:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17109326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DwarvenBeardSpores/pseuds/DwarvenBeardSpores
Summary: Several years after they parted ways, Marwood and Withnail run into each other in Paris. As they get cake and try to navigate their new dynamic, the staff of Antique Bakery have a reunion of their own.





	The Finest Cakes Available to Humanity

**Author's Note:**

> My forays into increasingly niche crossovers continues with this gift I wrote a few months ago for my mom's birthday. I've been sitting on it, unsure if I wanted to post, but damn it, turns out I do.

In the years that passed following our living together, Withnail and I met up several times. Sometimes it was with the easy camaraderie of old friends, who had suffered unbearable slings and arrows while sharing an apartment, and sometimes one or both of us was sober or approaching it, and the conversation took a turn for the stilted and uncomfortable. We had become two heavenly bodies, the earth and the moon (though who was which I can never be certain), orbiting each other indefinitely. We could never reconnect the way we had, for fear of a cataclysmic event that would destroy half the earth at once, and the other half in the shuddering aftermath of such a collision. But sometimes our orbits would line up and we would eclipse each other, the two of us a perfect line from the sun.

We had both made it to Paris somehow, me on tour with a company doing _Lady Windermere’s Fan_ , him doing God knows what on the tail end of a successful TV bit that, to his dismay, showed only his hands. I would recognize that greasy hair and those cheekbones anywhere. “Withnail?” I called, half-jogging down the street after him. “Withnail!”

He turned and looked me over with a face that tried not to smile. “What the bloody hell are you doing here?”

We hadn’t seen each other in nearly a year, the last time being a tense reunion at an audition neither of us had been called back for. We’d both been on-edge and had snapped terrible things. I wondered if we hated each other, and had spent many sleepless nights pondering the fact. Yet here we were, on a clear autumn day, and I wondered if it mattered at all.

“I’m working,” I said, and saying it to Withnail reminded me how truly incredible it was to be doing anything. “There’s a theater, a few blocks over. Run just started.”

He put a cigarette to his lips. “At least they didn’t make you cut your hair this time. How’s the—” he waved a hand, “the thing?”

“Oh, the thing, good, yeah,” I said, without having any idea what the thing was.

“Good.”

“You know how it is.”

“Oh, _do_ I,” he agreed, and I was glad.

“What about you?” I asked. “Why Paris? Why now?”

“If life was a play,” he said, “this would be the slow bit in act two, that everybody thinks should be cut until they realize it’s actually vital to understanding the conclusion. Cigarette?”

I took the cigarette and wondered, not for the first time, how the play of his life was structured in his mind. Where narrative structure began and ended, how he reasoned with madcap adventures that never went anywhere, how he rationalized it to himself when the plot seemed to end and he kept on living. He was thirty-seven and in the slow bit of act two, but where had act one started? What thread bound his life together? It turns out even now I can’t answer that for myself, let alone speculate for him.

“Out of work, then,” I guessed, and he shot me a sharp look and didn’t honor that with a response.

“I hate Paris,” he said instead. “They make it sound like you’ll come here and it’ll be full of depraved souls who sleep till noon and then stare insipidly out at the scenery as the sun goes down. I’d be right at home in a city like that. This one’s just got regular people and too many vowels.”

What do you say to something like that? I laughed nervously; maybe I was agreeing. I don’t think I wanted to. We were in the middle of the sidewalk, then, and people walked in wide loops around us. We could have stood there, smoking, until the cigarettes were gone, and then gone on our ways for the next six months, maybe years. “We should catch up,” I said. “Go to a restaurant or something and talk, like normal people.”

“Are you saying we’re not normal?”

“We never have been, and besides, we’re in the way. Look, there’s a.. a bakery or something over there. Let’s go in.”

Withnail grumbled, but he followed when I crossed the street and ground his cigarette with his heel before opening the door. A bell rang to signal our arrival. It was the sort of place that felt homey without actually resembling any place I'd ever called home. Wood furniture, scratched from use but polished to a shine. Plants watching out the windows, and lamps attached to the walls. Sconces? Was that the name for them? Has anyone's home ever had sconces in it? The air was warm and thick with sugar, but I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that I was stepping outside of Paris, or at least, outside of the Paris I knew. Maybe outside of time itself.

The shop was busy, mostly around the front counter. I claimed a table in the corner, sized for three, which pitched wildly when I leaned my elbow on it. There was a reason it was still empty. But despite that, and despite Withnail's disparaging sniff at finding himself anywhere but the center of attention, it was a good corner with a view of the entire shop.

"I don't suppose they serve scotch here," Withnail said. "We should've found a pub instead."

"No, they serve cakes." There was a laminated menu on the table, which I flapped at him. All the names were in French, which was one thing to speak and quite another to read. "Pick something why don't you?"

"Me? I don't know anything about cake."

"Which is why I'm letting you choose." In all honesty, it didn't much matter what kind of cake we got, or if we got cake at all. I see now that I was looking for a sign to tell me what he was doing, how he was doing, and if we'd passed the point of being friends or enemies and moved on to being strangers.

"Fine," he said, and barely glanced at the menu before raising his hand to summon a garçon. They were all busy and paid him no attention, not even when he stood and waved and said “excuse me! We’d like some service here please!” in English, and then repeated it in French.

I couldn’t watch. I had always been enamored by his boldness in demanding what he wanted, and I couldn’t reconcile that with how rude and embarrassing his actions now seemed to be. Which was the truth? Could they both be? It occurred to me that the last time we’d ordered cake from a shop together had been during our disastrous trip to Crow Craig, and we'd never actually gotten any.

My eyes landed on three Japanese men at the next table over. They had a view of the window, and a steadier table and more comfortable-looking chairs. It was probably the best seat in the shop. One man leaned back in his chair, as though an angle of forced nonchalance would reveal answers to all his questions. The other two leaned into each other intimately, though their faces were serious. Urgent. I found myself drawn to the man on the left and, while I can say he had short, light hair and glasses, that doesn’t capture his indescribable presence. Looking at him was like looking into an abyss, or up the slope of a mountain, at something vast and magnetic and inevitable.

Then he put his face in his hand and his companion stood and stood until he was towering above everyone in the shop. Now it was him I couldn’t take my eyes off, him and his stoic face and unsettling sunglasses.

“Withnail,” I said, swatting and where I imagined his arm to be. “Withnail sit down.”

The man turned toward us.

“He must be a spy or something, _sit down_ for Christ’s sakes before he gets here!”

Withnail must have seen him and come to the same conclusions. He sat down with a thump and a shaky breath that folded itself into his most butter-melting smile. My life flashed before my eyes, making special note to point out that when I was on my own, or with my theater troupe, I had not been approached by terrifying men nearly as often as when I was with Withnail. “You’re a magnet for them,” I hissed, and he said “what?” and then the tall man bowed before us.

“Pardon me,” he said in French that was not very good. “May I be of assistance?”

I glanced at Withnail. Withnail glanced at me. “I’m sorry,” Withnail said. “Do you work here?”

The man flushed, clearly taken aback at the question. “Ah— No. No I do not.

“Then what makes you think _you_ could help _us?_ ”

“I’m sorry!” He bowed again.

Neither of us knew what to say to that, but to our relief, or perhaps despair, the man who had first captivated my attention joined his companion. He spoke French as though he had known it all his life. “Please, forgive my friend. He is a garçon at our bakery back in Japan, and prides himself on being helpful, even beyond the confines of his job. Or, it seems, his language.”

He smiled apologetically, and I wondered if Withnail had managed to dose me with something. The air around him seemed to shimmer, like haze on a summer day. Withnail looked unsettled. I found myself smiling, and I smile when I’m nervous but I don’t think I was nervous then.

“It’s fine,” I said, and then because the man in the sunglasses still seemed upset, and I never like seeing anyone that large upset, I added, “We don’t mind waiting, really.”

It took a moment for his friend to translate that into Japanese, but the answer seemed to satisfy him.

“I’m Ono,” said the man who was good at French, “and this is Chikage. If it makes you feel any better, we’ve been waiting fifteen minutes and we’re friends with the pâtissier.”

“This is Withnail,” I said, gesturing, “and I’m—”

At that moment, the third Japanese man, who had remained at the table, called towards the counter. “Hey! Can we get some service here?”

Ono sighed. “I shouldn’t have come over. I’m the only one here with any impulse control.” He turned back to the table. “Tachibana,” he said. “He’ll serve us when he has a chance.”

Whatever charm this stranger had, it didn’t seem to work on the one named Tachibana. He shook his head. “I paid good money for the kid to be here, and now he can’t even be bothered to keep up with his customers? Hey kid! We want the finest cakes available to humanity, and we want them here and we want them now!”

I looked over at Withnail, wondering if he realized how similar that sounded to a demand he’d made so many years ago. It didn’t seem to register. Maybe he’d been too drunk, or maybe I was remembering something that had never happened.

“Say,” Withnail said, catching Ono before he returned to berate his loud friend. “You know, this table is really off-balance, and the shop is crowded enough as it is. You seem like nice folks, I don’t suppose you’d mind if we joined you?”

“ _Withnail,_ ” I hissed, but he ignored me.

Ono chuckled nervously. “Well, no, but—”

“Good.” Withnail stood and pulled me up with him.

I lingered just long enough to check my bag and mutter, “why would you do that?”

“They know the pâtissier,” he said. “They’re going to get served first, _and_ they’re going to get a discount.”

“Withnail, I can pay if— I was planning on treating anyway.”

He looked me over. “I suppose either of us could,” he said, and there was something odd in his face I couldn’t place. “Force of habit, I suppose. Oh well, they’re expecting us now.”

Our unwitting hosts were at a table well-sized for three or four, but too small really for five. Withnail and I ended up wedged between Chikage and the loud one, Tachibana, while Ono watched us from across the table. He explained the situation, or so I assume, and Tachibana’s face contorted into a series of concerning expressions as he looked between us and Ono. Withnail primly arranged his napkin. I just sat there, rubbing shoulders with the tallest man I’d ever met and the oldest friend I’d ever had and feeling violently exposed.

“So, Ono,” Tachibana said, switching to French for our benefit. “Which of these men is your _type_?”

Withnail stiffened beside me and I braced myself for Ono to get defensive, to abort this whole attempt at socialization, but he just sighed. “After all these years,” he murmured, adjusting his glasses, “you still can’t tell?”

“Well, I have my guesses, but…”

“And anyway, I may have demonic powers, but I’m with Chikage now. I’m not going to run off and have a fling with some Frenchman.”

“Him,” Chikage interrupted, gesturing at Withnail. “He’s your type.” _And here,_ I thought, i _s the point where Withnail gets punted out by a strong and jealous lover,_ but Chikage just smiled. “It’s the dark hair and the cheekbones, isn’t it?”

Ono blushed. “You know me so well…”

“Let me make something perfectly plain,” Withnail said. “I am nobody’s _type,_ I do not want to be anyone’s _type,_ and we are _not_ French. We happen to be from England.”

I stopped listening as this prompted a debate over whether or not the English had any sense of taste at all. The answer is no, we don’t, and we like it that way. I wondered instead what I was doing here, why I didn’t just get up and walk out. I didn’t need Withnail anymore, I’d proven that, and I didn’t need the thrill of excitement and nerves that coiled through my stomach at the improbable, outrageous things that happened when he was around. It’s not as though it did me any good and besides, with his _dark hair and cheekbones,_ he soaked up attention like a sponge, one of those misshapen sea creatures that lived for thousands of years and did nothing for anybody.

He hadn’t said anything cruel to them, at least. I hadn’t said anything cruel. We had learned cruelty easily, towards ourselves and anyone else we who destabilized the way things “should be” while we drifted, alone and uncertain and afraid. I was still afraid, I think I’ll always be afraid and there's a part of me that will always be trapped naked in that corner. But I wasn’t afraid of these men and whatever intimacies they might share. Not after working in the theater and seeing that the world, for all that it wasn't what we'd been taught to expect, was just filled with people. Frightened and bold and lonely and striving. Often, I still felt— and indeed I still feel— like I was falling haphazardly through time, but at least I knew that I wasn't the only one.

"So," I cut in, before things got too heated, ”you said you know the pâttisier?"

The three beamed. "Kanda is our protégé," Tachibana said proudly. "He learned everything he knows from our shop, _Antique._ "

"That's back in Japan," Ono explained. "When he'd learned all I could teach him, he came to study with the masters in France. He's been here three months and we miss him terribly."

Chikage cut in with something I couldn't understand, and a tear rolled down his cheek.

"He says the whole shop is quieter," Tachibana explained, then added, "And the quality has gone down. Without an apprentice to impress, Ono has been slacking."

"I have not! I just don't have as much time as I used to..."

They bickered a bit, alternating French and Japanese, and I tuned it out. They were bakery workers, I suppose, but they felt like the cast and crew of a play in how close they were, how they knew from experience what buttons they could push and which ones to stay away from. Like a family, but not like any family I'd ever been a part of. "Withnail," I said, and continued in English, "just tell me straight. Are you here looking for work?"

He spat the response. "Why should I be looking for work? You've seen my commercials."

"I have, of course I have."

"And I've got another three lined up. I don't need your charity, or whatever bit part you were going to offer me."

"I wasn't going to offer you anything." And indeed, I had nothing to offer. No parts, no audition tips, nothing but his good name on my lips as I spoke with directors and producers, but I had swallowed that down long ago in the hopes that I'd make some sort of family with my coworkers, new and exciting and without any reminders of the wreck I used to be. And we didn't do favors for each other, Withnail and I. That wasn't who we were anymore. "I just wanted to know. We're catching up, you said we could catch up."

"I didn't think it would be so boring."

He didn't look noticeably older, or younger. New coat, cleaner smell, more intact shoes. "You really haven't gotten any softer," I said.

"So? What kind of world is it you think it lets you get softer? And besides, you always were soft enough for both of us."

I smiled, but it was a transitory movement more than an expression, and faded back into neutrality. "I thought maybe we would have balanced ourselves out."

He scoffed. "And have you got any harder?"

"No," I said. "I've just gotten better at being soft." It made sense at the time, something about being able to say the things I'd always wanted to say and never had, but we were interrupted by a loud shout.

" _Sensei!_ You came!" A young man, maybe in his early twenties, dressed in whatever it was bakers wore, barreled out of the crowd. He flung his arms around Ono and squeezed tight. "I'm so sorry to keep you waiting! It was busy, so I was making more choux and meringue, and Pierre didn’t mention anyone asking for me!”

Ono laughed. “It’s quite alright. We’ve been enjoying the atmosphere, and speaking to these other customers, Withnail and, er—”

But the pâttisier who must have been Kanda wasn’t listening. He was too excited to deal with a few misplaced strangers. He hugged Tachibana next, calling him an old man, and then Chikage swallowed him in a spine-crushing hug. “We’ve missed you so much!” he said, in French, like he’d been practicing that specifically.

“I missed you too,” Kanda said, muffled in Chikage’s embrace. It took him a minute to squirm free, but when he did he cried “you’ve got to try my new cakes!”

“Well of course,” Tachibana said. “That’s what we’re here for. This is a business investment you know!” But he was grinning, barely serious.

“I’ll be right back!” Kanda dashed back towards the kitchen, and was back carrying two full trays before the others could do anything but wipe the tears from their eyes. He spread them out, and Tachibana’s face blanched.

“Choux a la créme, financier, and shortcake? I thought you were inventing new cakes, and working on those really elaborate ones!”

Kanda laughed. “Of course I am! But Ono knows why!” 

Ono beamed. “You remembered what I taught you. Anyone can tell the quality of a bakery by these three cakes alone.”

“Right! I can get you some of the fancier ones later. Give these a try!” As he spoke, he distributed plates around the table and, to my surprise, Withnail and I were offered the cakes as well. Of course we accepted.

I’ll admit I know nothing about cakes, and the conversation about the intricacies of each flew over my head. I can tell you nothing about the balance of flavors and textures, the quality of the ingredients, any of that. What I can tell you was that they looked gorgeous, smelled delicious, and tasted even better. I think they might be the finest cakes available to humanity. I don’t see how it could be otherwise.

I had just finished the choux when I looked up and saw all four of them staring at me.

“Well?” Ono pressed.

“It’s really good,” I said, around the cake still shoved in my mouth. “Amazing, really.”

A slow and triumphant smile grew on the pâttisier’s face, his joy increasing over the course of several seconds. “Yes!” he finally exclaimed. I wondered why he was still getting excited. He must get these kind of reactions every day.

“You,” Withnail said, “have a disgusting amount of talent.” And from that stellar compliment he went on to flatter Kanda for more free cake.

I’m not sure how long we sat there, absorbing the good feeling of someone else’s reunion and gorging ourselves on cake. It was impossible to tell the passage of time from inside the shop. Kanda raced from our table to the kitchen because he was still on duty, and so for the most part Withnail and I were either awkwardly included in the conversations between the other three, or politely ignored. We learned that Kanda had another six months of apprenticeship lined up, and that all three of them were worried he wouldn’t return to Japan. We were served cake with impossibly delicate chocolate decorations, and the best raspberry jam I’ve ever eaten. Eventually I decided we’d stayed our welcome and ushered Withnail back into the street, still sucking sugar from my fingers.

It was sunset outside, and things suddenly felt sharper, more real, less faded by someone else’s nostalgia. We walked down the street together, slowly, unsure where we’d begin going in different directions. “That was nice.”

Withnail made a noncommittal noise that I decided to take as agreement.

“They’ve got something,” I said. “I mean, imagine coming all the way from Japan to visit with someone you worked with. That kind of— that kind of connection. It’s amazing.”

“Is it?”

I looked at him sideways and said “we’d never do that for each other.”

He sniffed. “And yet we ended up here at the same time. Do you think that was coincidence?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I do. Cause we’re not like that. I keep wondering if we are, if we ever were, if there’s any chance we could be in the future. But we’re not, are we?”

“No,” he said. “I suppose we aren’t.”

“But we’re something else,” I pressed. “We’re this, right now. This sunset and walk and that cigarette. This is us.”

That jumble of words was just waiting a mockery, but for once he didn’t bother. “It would seem so.”

I don’t know if that’s what I needed to hear, or if I just decided it was afterwards, but things seemed a lot clearer. Even during the moments when we were our own worst enemies, even if we would always be pulling each other back towards that hellhole of an apartment, at least we’d never be alone. We did have the same understanding after all, even if neither of us understood exactly what that was.

“Where are you playing?” he asked. “I thought I might stop by and see your show.”

This would be the first time Withnail had ever gone out of his way to see me act. I told him the location. I also told him not to come to my stage door with criticism. I didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t agree at the time, but after the show two nights later, I would find him smoking on the curb and he would say nothing beyond “you did well,” and “Wilde writes a good play.”

We paused at a corner, the inevitable branching-off point. “What’s the opposite of entropy?” I asked. “Or, not the opposite. That would be creation, wouldn’t it. The word for entropy and its opposite all at once, what’s that?”

He took a drag on his cigarette. “Fuck if I know,” he said. “That’s just time, isn’t it?”

“Time, yeah.” It wasn’t the word I wanted, but it fit. “I’ll see you around, Withnail,” I shoved my hands in my pockets and we parted ways.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I'd love to hear what you thought, especially if you know both these media, haha.
> 
> I can also be found on dreamwidth and twitter as dwarvenbeardspores, and tumblr as dwarven-beard-spores.


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